Scratching the surface: the use of sheepskin parchment to deter textual erasure in early modern legal deeds

Sean Paul Doherty; Stuart Henderson; Sarah Fiddyment; Jonathan Finch; Matthew J Collins

doi:10.1186/s40494-021-00503-6

Scratching the surface: the use of sheepskin parchment to deter textual erasure in early modern legal deeds

Herit Sci. 2021;9(1):29. doi: 10.1186/s40494-021-00503-6. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Authors

Sean Paul Doherty^{1

2}, Stuart Henderson^{2

3}, Sarah Fiddyment³, Jonathan Finch², Matthew J Collins^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
² Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK.
³ McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁴ Section for Evolutionary Genetics, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Abstract

Historic legal deeds are one of the most abundant resources in British archives, but also one of the most neglected. Despite the millions that survive, we know remarkably little about their manufacture, including the species of animal on which they were written. Here we present the species identification of 645 sixteenth-twentieth century skins via peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS), demonstrating the preferential use of sheepskin parchment. We argue that alongside their abundance and low cost, the use of sheepskins over those of other species was motivated by the increased visibility of fraudulent text erasure and modification afforded by the unique structure of their skin.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40494-021-00503-6.

Keywords: Biocodicology; Legal deeds; Manuscripts; Parchment; Proteomics; Sheepskin.